


cellar of madness

by Springsteen



Series: open all night [4]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 12:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7361053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Springsteen/pseuds/Springsteen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What better way to celebrate halloween than by going to a real haunted house?</p>
            </blockquote>





	cellar of madness

**Author's Note:**

> title is from a bob drake song (if you've never heard it, it's very creepy and very great for halloween). the original prompt was "looks like we'll be trapped for a while."

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Chowder asked. “Ollie and Wicks were talking about, like, an actual haunted house - I mean a fake one - with, like, actors. People. There was a haunted hayride?”

“Chowder,” Nursey said, turning around to walk backwards, “Chill. Haunted houses are bullshit. I’m not paying someone to chase me around with a chainsaw.”

“I’ll chase you with a chainsaw,” Dex said. “You don’t even have to pay me.”

“Your face is scary enough, Poindexter. No chainsaw needed.”

“ _Fuck you_!”

“Where is this place again?” Chowder interrupted. “I thought you said it was somewhere on this street?”

“It’s this way,” Nursey said, turning down a narrow alley that led back toward the river. After a few minutes, he stopped in front of a run-down house, a sign in the window warning about potential hazards. A couple of the windows were broken and there was a hole in the porch roof. Dex could easily imagine this happening to the Haus, if no one bothered to fix it up and no one lived in it for a few years. “One of the guys in my English class said the back door lock is broken.”

The three of them stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the house. It was getting dark out, though the sun hadn’t set just yet. They had practice the next morning, and none of them really wanted to sneak into a supposedly haunted house at midnight, even if it was almost Halloween. 

“Well?” Dex asked. “Did you walk us all the way over here just to look at it?”

“Just wanna make sure you’re not gonna chicken out on me,” Nursey replied.

“Um,” Chowder said. Both Dex and Nursey turned to him. 

“We’re not gonna make you go in there if you don’t want to,” Dex said. 

“No, it’s not… Can’t we get in trouble?” Chowder asked. “Isn’t this trespassing?”

Dex shrugged. “Good reason not to get caught,” he said, casually walking around the side of the house to the backyard. Nursey followed him, Chowder close behind. Crouching, Dex looked at the doorknob before pushing the door open with his shoulder. It opened easily, creaking. “Here we go,” Dex said.  
The house was dark, mostly empty except for a few pieces of broken and mismatched furniture pushed against the wall. The three of them walked through the kitchen, feeling their way along because none of them brought a flashlight.

“Dude,” Nursey said, “Why didn’t we bring a flashlight? I’m not killing my phone battery for this.”

“If you’re gonna break into a house just to walk around with a flashlight, you might as well call the cops on yourself,” Dex said. “Besides, I thought this was supposed to be scary.”

“This is scary,” Chowder said. “Do you hear that?” They stood still and listened to a slow groaning noise that came from somewhere upstairs.

“It’s probably just the wind,” Nursey said, though his imagination was running wild with possibilities.

“Or a wild animal,” Dex helpfully suggested. “Could be a raccoon.”

“Oh my god,” Chowder said. “What if it’s a thousand roaches? What if it’s a _person_?”

“Yo, Chowder, chill,” Nursey said, sounding decidedly un-chill. He turned around and took a few stumbling steps backward. “There are no roaches, and there’s no person - it’s just a house. We’re-” With a huge crash, the floor under Nursey’s feet cracked. Stupidly, Dex grabbed for him, and both of them fell through to the basement below. 

Miraculously, they managed to land on something soft. Dex curled to the side, straight into Nursey, who was sprawled out flat on his back. “This is the dumbest shit you have ever done,” Dex said. 

“Me?” Nursey asked. “How is this my fault?”

“Whose dumbass idea was it to come here in the first place?”

“You’re the one who said you wanted to do something scary for Halloween!”

“I didn’t mean falling through the floor of a condemned frat house!”

“Guys?” Chowder yelled. “Does the arguing mean you’re okay?”

Carefully, Dex rolled to his feet. Nursey slowly moved both of his arms and his legs but stayed on the floor. “We’re fine, Chowder,” Dex called. “I’m gonna see if we can get out of here.” He turned on his phone’s flashlight and made his way across the basement, carefully stepping around water-damaged cardboard boxes to get to the stairs. “Uh oh,” he muttered to himself. One of the basement windows had been broken, too narrow for either of them to fit through but big enough to let in wind and rain. The wooden stairs leading up from the basement looked worn and rotten, cracked in several places and missing a few nails. He tested the first stair with his foot. It gave with a dull thunk, the nails pulling easily out of the rotten wood.

“The stairs are all rotted, there’s no way we can get up them,” he called up to Chowder.

Nursey groaned. “Wait a second.” He sat up. “What if I stood on your shoulders? I could totally reach the floor that way.”

Dex stared down at him. “If the floor was weak enough to break from you walking on it, you trying to haul your ass up will probably just bring more of it down on top of us.” Nursey collapsed back to what Dex now realized was an old mattress, covered in stains and torn at one corner. 

“Okay,” Chowder called. “Okay, you’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna go get Ransom and Holster. And Bitty. And a ladder? I’m gonna call Bitty first. I’m gonna go get help!”   
Dex sighed. “Thanks, Chowder. I’m gonna turn off my flashlight, so my phone doesn’t die.”

“I’ll be back!” Chowder yelled. “Um. Be careful! I’ll be back soon!” 

The floor creaked and groaned as Chowder made his way back through the kitchen. The back door opened and closed, and Nursey and Dex were alone. “Well,” Dex said, “Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while.” 

“No,” Nursey said, finally standing up. “No, fuck that. We’re getting out of here.” He tried to walk over to Dex and crashed into one of the boxes. “Are you sure I can’t stand on your shoulders? What if we stack this shit up so we can climb out?”

“Absolutely not,” Dex said. “We’re lucky enough we didn’t get hurt falling down here, I am not gonna injure myself and lose my athletic scholarship because of you.”

“Stop blaming this on me!” Nursey yelled. “It’s not like I planned for this to happen!” Nursey glared at the broken window. Dex could see him contemplating climbing through it. 

“Bad idea,” Dex said.

“How are you so chill?” Nursey yelled. “We’re trapped in the basement of a haunted house, that mattress looks like somebody got murdered on it, and we could be crushed literally any second! Why aren’t you freaking out?”

Dex shrugged. Once, when he was younger, he’d gone out on his uncle’s lobster boat with his dad and a few of his cousins. The weather reports had been changing every hour, but it had just been cloudy when they set out. The storm rolled in fast, and panic would only cause them more trouble. It had been terrifying, but they made it through, and Dex had learned to keep calm in crisis situations. “Chowder knows we’re here. He’s probably gonna bring the whole team over in like ten minutes. We’ll be fine.”

It was pretty dark in the basement, the only light filtering down through the hole in the ceiling. Dex walked across the floor until he got to Nursey. He put his arm around him shoulders and could feel him shaking. “Hey, wait, is it a full moon?”

“What?” Nursey asked.

“I mean, this kinda looks like the sort of place a werewolf would hang out,” Dex continued. “Like Lupin at the Shrieking Shack, you know?”

“You are such a nerd,” Nursey grumbled, curling closer into Dex’s side.

“Does that look like blood to you?” Dex gestured at one of the stains on the mattress. “This place would make a good vampire nest. Or is it a den? A coven?”

“Why are you saying these things?” Nursey moaned, right into Dex’s ear.

“I’m trying to distract you,” he said.

“Well you’re doing a terrible job,” Nursey said. Above them, something rattled, and Nursey tensed, curling one of his hands painfully into Dex’s side. “What was that?” Nursey whispered.

“Probably a ghoul,” Dex said. Nursey kicked him in the shin. “OW! What the fuck?”

“I have an overactive imagination and you are not helping,” he hissed. “Talk about something nice.”

“What?”

“Be better at distracting me,” Nursey demanded. His fingers were still digging into Dex’s side. He would definitely have a bruise there.

“I’m not good at telling stories,” Dex said. “That’s your thing.”

“I don’t care if you tell me what you had for breakfast for the past week, talk about literally anything,” Nursey said. “Tell me about your uncle’s lobster boat, or your other uncle’s appliance repair business, or your CS classes, I do not care.”

Nursey’s hair tickled his neck. For once, he was the one with his shoulders tensed up around his ears. He’d managed to tuck his head under Dex’s chin and he still clung to Dex, a life raft in a storm. There was only one thing Dex wanted to tell him, and however Nursey reacted, he was sure he’d be distracted from their current situation.

“I don’t want my first kiss with you to be in this creepy basement,” he said. 

Nursey looked up at him so fast he narrowly avoided hitting Dex’s chin with his head. “You _what_?”

No going back now, Dex thought. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while,” he admitted. “This is pretty much the least romantic place in the world.”

Nursey stared at him. Dex tensed, preparing to for Nursey to yell, or hit him, or react at all. “How long?” he finally demanded.

“What?”

“How long have you wanted to kiss me?” Nursey repeated.

Dex shrugged. “Since, I don’t know, sometime after playoffs last year.”

“Is this a joke?” Nursey asked. “Are you making fun of me?”

“What?” Dex asked again. “No, what the hell? Why would I do that?”

“I could’ve come up to visit you over the summer,” Nursey said. “We could’ve been making out all year. Fuck, we could’ve been dating this whole time and you just tell me this now in this creepy-ass basement?” Nursey’s voice rose through this whole speech so that by the end of it he was yelling. “I wanted to kiss you since you scored that goal in Philly and you’re saying I could have? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Dex asked quietly. 

“I thought you were straight!” Nursey yelled. “I’m not a total asshole!”

“Nursey?” Chowder’s voice called. “Dex?”

“Help has arrived!” Holster yelled.

“How are y’all so stupid?” Bitty yelled. “Y’all coulda died! What if y’all broke something? Or got tetanus? What the fuck is wrong with y’all?”

“Heads up,” Ransom called. He rolled down the emergency fire ladder Jack had kept in the Haus. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. This place is way too creepy.”  
Dex stepped back and motioned for Nursey to go first. Nuresy scrambled up the ladder and out of sight. Dex hurried after him, and as soon as his feet hit the floor Bitty grabbed his arm and dragged him and Nursey out of the house.

“I can’t believe how thoughtless y’all were,” he said, immediately launching into a lecture. “You coulda been seriously injured, and we’ve just started the season. We really need y’all on your game. I’m just so disap-”

Nursey wrenched his arm away from Bitty, launched himself at Dex, and kissed him. Dex stumbled backwards, trying to keep his balance while not putting any more distance between them. Nursey’s stubble scraped against his face, his hands clutching tight to Dex’s hips. Dex had one hand fisted in the front of Nursey’s shirt, his other arm thrown around his neck. Nursey licked across his lips and he opened his mouth, letting Nursey press his tongue inside.

Distantly, Dex realized there was a lot of noise going on in the background. “Oh my Lord!” Bitty squealed. “Do y’all have to do this in front of me? In front of _Chowder_?”

“Wow,” Ransom said. “I feel like we can’t fine them for this.”

“Why don’t you kiss me like that?” Holster asked. 

“Stop! This is too much!” Chowder yelled. 

Nursey pulled back and looked over his shoulder, grinning. “Sorry, Chow. Been wanting to do that for a long time.”

Dex kissed him again, just a brief press of lips. “Now you can kiss me whenever you want,” he whispered. “Maybe not in front of the team, though.”

“Deal,” Nursey said. On the walk back to the Haus, he stuck his hand in Dex’s back pocket. “No more haunted houses, ever.”

Dex laughed and wrapped his arm around Nursey’s waist. “Okay, deal.”


End file.
